


Sharpen Your Knife

by SparklingGanymede



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:55:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5752771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparklingGanymede/pseuds/SparklingGanymede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not about winning. It's about who ends up broken in the end.</p><p>Hanamiya Makoto tries to pierce The Iron Heart, but nobody warned him about shielding his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Slithered Here

Makoto wasn’t much in the way of keeping clutter in his living space, but there existed a certain stack of magazine clippings and cropped photos that he kept around for special occasions. To mount on his dartboard, that is. Where exactly he got the photos was nobody’s business, and it wasn’t a crime to cut up old magazines, so what did it matter if all of them happened to be of Kiyoshi Teppei?

It wasn’t a _fixation_ , he would insist as he aimed another dart at the irritating goody-goody’s knees if anyone were to discover it. It was _stress relief_ , proved nothing, and hurt exactly no one (unfortunately).

He just liked the idea of hurling sharp objects at people he hated.

So, when he just so happened to run into Seirin’s overly cheerful starting center at a convenience store without any cutting implements on hand, the best he could do was glare daggers.

Kiyoshi, naturally, greeted him with a surprised smile. “Hanamiya! Never expected to see you around these parts. Nice weather we’re having, huh?”

Because strangling him with witnesses around would amount to serious jail time, Makoto didn’t. Instead, he grinded his teeth and seethed inwardly, crushing the chocolate bar he had been planning to buy in his hand as he imagined what it would feel like if his knuckles connected with Kiyoshi’s teeth.

Not because he still wanted to ruin the idiot’s dreams—although that _would_ be a nice bonus—but because he just needed to _hit_ something.

“Do you live around here or are you just passing through?” Kiyoshi pestered as if Makoto had graced him with verbal acknowledgement.

Even though nothing could ever top finally losing his shit in front a spectator crowd at prelims, he saw no reason to put on a show for the clerk and two girls giggling over phone straps by the counter. So, he threw the broken chocolate down, kicked it under a shelf— _fuck_ paying for damages—and exited the store without saying a single word.

There were other, less moron-infested places he could spend his Sunday afternoon.

Fifteen minutes later, Kiyoshi decided to ruin his coffee, too, by existing in the vicinity and looking happy about it. Makoto swallowed his first sip in disgust, scanning the crowd outside the café and calculating the quickest way to make his escape without being seen.

“Hey, I didn’t know you liked coffee.”

But not quickly enough. Given the choice between tossing his coffee and making a run for it (the idiot’s bad knee would surely make up for his annoyingly long legs) and hearing whatever it is was Kiyoshi thought was important enough to bother him over, Makoto decided to… well, not _grin_ , but bear it. Maybe he could make the exchange unpleasant enough that Kiyoshi wouldn’t feel the need to approach him ever again.

Makoto glared ahead as he took another sip.

“You seem like you know this strip pretty well.”

He didn’t, but Kiyoshi had no reason to know that he was avoiding his usual hangouts for a change of pace and unsuspectingly picked this part of town thinking nobody who knew him lived nearby. Tokyo was so huge and densely populated that his odds of running into the last person he wanted to see had to have been…

Kiyoshi’s smile practically split his face in half, crinkling at the corners of his eyes.

_100%_

Fuck his life.

“Still upset, huh? Y’know,” Kiyoshi sighed. “I was serious when I said I wanted to face you again.”

Finally, Makoto reached his boiling point. “Cut the shit, asshole. What do you want? If it’s an apology, you’re not getting one.”

Kiyoshi chuckled, obnoxiously enjoying how much Makoto wanted to grind him into a pulp. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Then, what? You’re taking your revenge by _stalking_ me?”

“Hanamiya, I’m just walking home.” He indicated the plastic sack looped over his wrist. “Grandma sent me to get aspirin and a newspaper. I just thought I’d say hi since you were around.”

“ _Whatever._ You said it now, so you can fuck off.”

Kiyoshi continued smiling like an idiot. “Aright, alright. I’ll leave you in your brooding misery to wander the streets alone. You should really try shooting me an email more often, though. Wouldn’t want to lose touch.”

Makoto could feel his left eye beginning to twitch. “The only thing I want to _shoot_ at you is a bullet.”

As if Makoto hadn’t just delivered him a death threat, Kiyoshi laughed loudly enough to turn heads. “Well, it was good seeing you, but Grandpa’s down in his back, so I really do have to get home.” He waved as he began to walk off. “Later, Hanamiya!”

Makoto purposely downed the rest of his coffee in one pull to avoid giving a reply.

_Idiot._

 

 

* * *

 

 

His boys thankfully seemed to be taking his post-season sulk in stride. They still did their weekend thing at the arcade—they didn’t _need_ Makoto to direct their social interactions—and push never really came to shove outside of wrecking their opponents. So, when Makoto insisted on visiting a bookstore the following Sunday instead of doing the usual, no questions were asked, and nobody commented on it. It was his favorite quality of the team, really. They all just seemed to _get it_ , so he never had to waste any time explaining the obvious.

Like last week, he chose a different store to patronize than he normally visited, this one a considerable distance from the coffee shop. Not that he expected Kiyoshi to be much of a reader, but one could never be too careful.

He got halfway through reading the back cover of some run-of-the-mill high fantasy novel when a pair of familiar voices carried over the shelf divider from the manga section.

“Hey, what about this one?”

“I think he already has that one.”

No, it couldn’t be.

“But I thought Kuroko only had the first two volumes.”

_It was._

“Yeah, but he buys books all the time. It’s been out since October, so he probably already has it.”

Maybe if he just waited it out, they’d grab whatever was over there and leave.

“I know! Why don’t we get him a sci-fi book?”

Or they could just fuck right over to where Makoto was standing like some cosmically orchestrated joke at his expense. He took one final glance at the scantily-clad sorceress on the cover before cramming it back onto the shelf and evaluated his options at either end of the aisle. To his left, nothing. To his right, a cute girl browsing unaccompanied along the back wall.

“Does he even _like_ sci-fi?”

“Well, that one book had a robot in it…”

“Okay, that sounds good. If he doesn’t like it, we can just take it back, right?”

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum started shuffling to his left, and Makoto had no time to think. The girl to his right shelved whatever she had been looking at and tilted her head back to scan the top shelf with a forlorn sigh.

Makoto wasn’t as freakishly tall as Kiyoshi or that purple-haired titan from Yosen, but he still towered over most of the local population, and right then was the perfect opportunity to exploit it for all it was worth. The girl squeaked in surprise and covered her mouth as he sidled up next to her.

He put on his sweetest fake smile, the one that fooled everyone but his mother and the people who knew better, and whispered against her temple, “Hi.”

She blushed furiously and adjusted her thick black frames. “H… hi?”

“Need some help?” He reached over her head and spared a glance at the top shelf.

She tittered, letting her eyes wander down his body.

Then, the dumbass duo rounded the corner.

“Hey, this one looks cool!”

The girl’s eyes snapped back up to Makoto’s. “I… I have to go.” But not before digging in her handbag for a pen and scribbling her digits onto the back of his hand. “Call me,” she mouthed, rising to her tiptoes to snatch a book from the shelf below Makoto’s hand.

As she scampered off, the walls of the bookstore shrank. His eyes and Kiyoshi’s met, deadlocked.

“H-Hanamiya?” Kiyoshi’s cat-faced companion panicked, but Makoto paid him no mind.

Kiyoshi lit up like a firework. “Hanamiya! It’s a small world after all.”

“Yeah,” Makoto sneered. “ _Too_ small.”

As if he had said nothing, Kiyoshi held up a book with a scantily-clad sorceress on the front and asked, “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know if this one’s any good, would you?”

Had he known one way or the other, Makoto would’ve lied and told Kiyoshi the opposite of whatever he thought about it— _especially_ since it was a gift for that phantom pain in the ass—but rather than risk accidentally recommending the little shit a good book, he just shrugged and answered, “Pff, how would _I_ know? I don’t read stupid shit like that.”

Kiyoshi’s spark faded a little, enough to dial down the irritation of his presence from sandpaper to a light itch. Then, he looked up somewhere above Makoto’s head and smiled knowingly. “Ah, I get it. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner.”

“Figure _what_ out?” Makoto spat.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“Whatever.”

“Hey, I’ll catch you later, alright?” Then, Kiyoshi turned to his quivering friend. “Let’s get this gift wrapped.”

As they lumbered away to the register, Makoto took a quizzical look behind him to see what Kiyoshi had been staring at.

**◊Harlequin**

Any ordinary teenage boy would’ve found it embarrassing to get caught hovering around the romance section, but for Makoto the staging couldn’t be more perfect. If Kiyoshi was so _desperate_ to believe that he possessed some form of good in his heart, Makoto would let him. Destroying men outside of the basketball court rarely piqued his interest, but Kiyoshi had the audacity to not only take a beating gracefully but also act like _nothing had happened_ , and the sting of a web tangled and torn burrowed its way into Makoto’s skin like a scabies infestation.

He reconsidered the number on the back of his hand, the threads of a new plan weaving together.

If he couldn’t crush Kiyoshi’s spirit by breaking his body, a little heartbreak would do.


	2. I Had a Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kiyoshi has some introspective gay thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unrelated to anything that happens in this chapter, but found some interesting Tumblr posts relating to Kuroko's reading preferences and I had just sort of _assumed_ that he flows the same vein of light novel trash as my darling Mayuyu, but apparently Kurororo is way more intellectual than he ever gets credit for.
> 
> Well, either that or he's carrying around his reading assignments a lot. Kinda like how I read The Life of Pi in college even though it's actually a really good book and I enjoyed it, and everybody please read The Life of Pi even though it's neither about dessert or an irrational number. Also, love yourself and don't waste your time on the movie, it was so horrible I almost went into a coma and died while watching it.
> 
> So, yeah, Kuroko will probably just... put his present on a shelf out of politeness and then never touch it again, but it's the thought that counts, right?
> 
> Anyway, I guess I should apologize for nutting on y’all and leaving without calling the next day after that first chapter, and I would say “Shit happened,” but it was really more like diarrhea happened because it just _would not stop._

“Kill them with kindness,” his grandma had told him one day.

Teppei remembered it clearly: The sun was hanging low in the afternoon sky, cicadas were singing their distinctive song of summer, and white-hot tears were running down his face because a mean kid in his class had teased him about his height. He was barely eleven years old and the tallest kid in his class by several centimeters at a gangly 177, and even his teachers had to look up at him.

Of course, having an adult-sized body made sitting in a child-sized chair uncomfortable, embarrassing, and side-splittingly _hilarious_ to a girl sitting in the back row. He couldn’t remember her name anymore, but he’d never forget what she said when he stood up and both of his knees cracked _loudly_ , stiff from being forced under a desk much too short for him.

“Wow, Kiyoshi’s aging so fast he’s already an old man!”

It wasn’t particularly clever. If he’d been more confident about his size, he might even have laughed along with her. But when the entire room burst into giggles, the blood rushed to his face, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and it took every bit of his self control not to cry.

In the following days, the girl kept up a running commentary on his height, comparing him to a tree because of his name, asking him if he’d “seen Mothra” recently, and even going so far as making a wildly insensitive joke about nuclear radiation that swiftly landed her in detention. The jokes stopped after that, but the damage had been done.

Teppei hated his body more than ever.

Two weeks later, that same girl tripped down the stairs at the front entrance of the school, twisting her ankle and breaking her arm. Teppei had long since forgotten why he’d stayed late that day, but most of the other students had already gone home, and he remembered being the only one around when she fell.

No one would have blamed him if he’d simply laughed at her misfortune and passed her by, but he couldn’t help the pang of mixed sympathy and terror at the sound of her shriek. He rushed to her side without a second thought. 

“Are you okay?!” he shouted. Stupid question, really, but it instantly exited his mouth.

The unforgiving concrete had shredded her knees and torn open her palm where she’d caught herself, and there were a few minor cuts on one of her legs. Her only answer was loud open sobbing as the blood ran down her shins.

“Can you stand?” he pressed a little more gently.

She sniffled and whimpered and shifted her legs, gasping as soon as she tried to lift herself.

“No,” she croaked out, tears and snot running down like waterfalls. She needed to see the nurse badly, and there was no way she could walk there.

“Let me carry you.”

She was small. Waifish, even. If Teppei could lift his grandma to help her off a stepladder, he could lift this girl, too.

She looked bewildered when he offered but seemed resigned to it. “Okay.”

Fortunately, she had positioned herself to where he could loop one arm under her knees and cradle her. Which he did, pulling her closer to his chest for better balance, and slowly stood upright. She was a solid weight in his arms, but nothing burdensome. He’d carried heavier boxes while helping Grandpa sort his rock collection.

When she came to school a few days later wearing a cast, a foot brace, and white stockings to cover the scrapes on her legs, nobody laughed, certainly not Teppei. At lunch, he brought his bento over to her desk and sat in the chair in front of her. She hesitantly let him sign her cast with a felt-tip marker.

Get well soon, he had written. Next to it, he drew a tree and a smiley face.

As she smiled shyly and thanked him for it, Grandma’s words of wisdom echoed in the back of his mind:

_Kill them with kindness._

It had since become one of the guiding principles Teppei would live by, especially if he needed a favor, but mostly when he needed to convince somebody to see things his way. More recently in his life, it had helped him form a basketball team through sheer persistence, and his success only strengthened his belief. If it worked on somebody as stubborn as Hyuuga, he figured, it could work on anybody, and he’d yet to see Grandma’s wisdom fail.

Which made Hanamiya Makoto’s very existence a sharp rock in his shoe.

Hanamiya ruined people’s basketball careers as a hobby, which few would argue made him anything more than a walking pile of feces, and Teppei couldn’t deny that seeing the Kirisaki captain with gritted teeth and clenched fists filled him with a buoyant surge of vindication. But somewhere in the back of his conscious was a prickle of unease. Taking pleasure in Hanamiya’s misery wasn’t anywhere close to kindness, and it certainly wasn’t accomplishing anything.

While Hanamiya’s putrid personality wore on his patience, Teppei was at a loss for what he wanted the outcome of their increasingly regular encounters to be. By all logic, Teppei should want to avoid any contact with him at all and focus solely on his recovery, but something about having watched Hanamiya’s brittle self control and pretense of innocence flake off like a bad paint job tied an irrational knot in his heart strings. He wouldn’t quite call it _fondness_ , but it lit him up from the inside just thinking about it and made him wonder…

What would happen if he _did_ show Hanamiya true kindness?

Hanamiya was acid personified, the scent of death with a face, sewage poured into a human mold, and—if their clash at the bookstore were any indication—apparently shielding a tender romantic heart underneath all those layers of asshole. Teppei _burned _to see it with his own eyes, to peel off the façade and pull on one of Hanamiya’s many frayed edges and find out just what made such a vindictive person tick.__

____

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was a little awkward, having a party planned for him despite his protests. Usually, a farewell party for retiring players was only done for third-year students, and being literally the only retiree from a team of underclassmen felt more isolating than appreciative. 

But Teppei put on a strong smile for everyone, pretended not to see Hyuuga’s tears during the announcement, made it a point to laugh at all of Izuki’s puns, and even choked down a whole slice of Riko’s dry, crumbly attempt at a chocolate cake. Fortunately, Kagami’s buxom American mentor happened to pack the fridge full of beer upon her arrival, which at least made doing all of those things a little easier. Riko, of course, didn’t approve, but she also officially wasn’t his coach anymore, and if Kagami had any objections to underage drinking in his apartment, he never voiced them.

“Just… don’t get too stupid to make it home,” she pleaded, staring down at the bottle in his hand.

“He can stay here if he wants to.” Kagami shrugged from the other end of the couch, where he was dutifully weaving a series of tiny braids in Alex’s hair while she sat in the floor drunkenly sharing what she called “dad jokes” in English with Izuki.

“Trust me a little, would you?” Teppei smiled, casually gesturing in Riko’s general direction with the bottle. “You’re the one who insisted on a party.”

Riko gingerly plucked it from his grasp, glaring at it. “I didn’t mean _this_ type of party.”

“Yeah, well. How many times am I going to fly to America to have my leg cut open?”

“It shouldn’t have even been this _once_ ,” she bit out, her scowl deepening.

And, not for the first time that evening, Teppei thought of Hanamiya. Wondered what he was doing, how he was feeling. Was he out with his friends somewhere?

Did he even _have_ friends?

“Speak of the devil…” Teppei reached for his bottle back, and Riko relinquished it with a sigh. He took a long sip and slouched deeper into the cushions. “I ran into him last week.”

“Did you knock his teeth in?”

He let out a bark of laughter. “I thought about it, but no. All I had to do was smile and be courteous , and he did the rest himself. It’s strange, really. I’ve never met somebody so…”

“Shitty?”

“Allergic to _happiness_. Like, I bet if somebody ran up and gave him a hug, he’d break out in hives.”

Then, it was Riko’s turn to laugh.

“Ooh, who are we talking about?” Koganei’s red face appeared between them from behind the couch. At some point, he had grabbed a bottle, too.

“Shittymiya,” Riko supplied with a perfectly straight face, and Teppei laughed so hard he coughed and nearly dropped his beer.

“ _Shitty_ miya,” he repeated, wiping a tear from his eye. “I’ll have to use that one next time.”

“Ahaha! Did Kiyoshi tell you what happened when we saw him at the bookstore on Sunday?” Koganei asked with absolutely zero volume control, and suddenly the entire room’s attention was on the three of them.

“No. He didn’t,” Riko answered with a sidelong glance. “Do tell.”

Teppei felt the heat of everyone’s gazes fall on him. “Well, uh. Me and Koganei… since I won’t be around for a few weeks—I’m sorry, Kuroko, _spoilers about your birthday_ —but, yeah, we wanted to find something for Kuroko, and Kuroko’s always reading stuff, right? So, we thought, ‘Let’s get him a book,’ but when we got there, we see _Hanamiya_ and, like, this girl just runs away from him while he’s standing by—” Teppei couldn’t help giggling at the thought. “He—he was standing by the _Harlequin_ section, okay? And, just. This look of _horror_ on his face when he sees us.”

Behind him, Koganei burst out laughing. “Who would’ve guessed, right? The _Bad_ Boy reads trashy romance novels!”

Varying levels of amusement filled the room, except for the noticeable (to those who would look for it) silence from Kuroko, who reacted with an almost blank, thought-filled stare out of the nearest window. Even beneath the haze of a good buzz, Teppei took stock of everyone’s reactions, finding comfort in the softened look of mirth in Riko’s eyes.

He wasn’t going to get chastised for this later. Maybe.

“Ya think he’s secretly, y’know, one of _those_ types of guys?” Koganei continued at a slightly lower volume. And then he downed the rest of his bottle.

“Wait, what type of guy?” Kagami blinked cluelessly, hands still busy with Alex’s exotic golden tresses.

“You mean like Mibuchi?” Kuroko’s voice drifted from across the room.

The only noise after that was the snap of a tiny red rubber band as Kagami finished off a row behind Alex’s left ear. “Rakuzan’s shooting guard?”

“You mean that pretty kid with the eyelashes and the hair?” Alex slurred with interest, pulling out of Kagami’s grip just as he was about to start separating her hair with a comb for the next row on her head.

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” Koganei confirmed.

“I don’t get it,” said Kagami, point-blank. Alex slapped him on the knee and lolled her head back between his legs to mumble something at him in English that made him blush to the tips of his ears. “ _Oh._ ”

“You really think he might be?” Furihata flopped in out of nowhere, sagging against the arm of the couch.

“Hey, _I_ could see it,” Koganei insisted, and Mitobe nodded from behind him. “What about you, Kiyoshi?”

Teppei had never given it any serious thought before. Mostly because he never _cared_ before. He turned the fuzzy concept over in his head, recalling every instance Hanamiya’s striking hazel eyes had bored into his. There was something intensely predatory in those looks, that was for sure, but specifically _that_ type of desire? It would raise more questions than it answered, but it would also give a different context to his fixation on Teppei.

What was it Hanamiya had called him at the Winter Cup prelims? His _masterpiece?_ That sounded like a pretty high honor. As far as Teppei was aware, Hanamiya held no special interest in any other player he’d ever ruined, and Hanamiya’s grudge seemed to run pretty deep for a mere high school sports rivalry. Like Teppei had something he desperately needed to destroy.

“Why are we even discussing that psycho anyway? This night is supposed to be about Kiyoshi,” Hyuuga cut in, clearly exhausted of their probably baseless speculations.

Probably.

But what if?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I [tweet](https://twitter.com/7thRockAlien) and [tumbl](http://sparklingganymede.tumblr.com/). 99.99% of it is bullshit, memes, and whining, but I will talk to you about stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> *aggressively elbows way into KiyoHana fandom*
> 
> Hello yes I am here. And also [here](https://twitter.com/7thRockAlien). I'll probably wake up tomorrow and immediately regret this.


End file.
